Hard pears

[Bill W]

I've just been given about a 5 gallon bucket full of small, hard pears. I don't know the variety but they have a sort of army-green colour, are hard and crunchy, like apples and are quite bland but not unpleasant in flavour.
I'm thinking pear wine or maybe perry/pear cider, but not sure which, if either, they will be suitable for.
If I keep them a few days, will they ripen more and sweeten? Or are they a cooking variety and need additions to give them flavour?
Any thoughts, suggestions or recipes would be most welcome.

 

[chopps]

Does freezing and thawing soften pears like it does with apples?

 

[Clint]

They will ripen in the house..on a window sill. Some fruits can be encouraged to ripen by placing a banana with them...I don't know why though.
Pears won't usually ripen on the tree.

 

[chthon]

Could be up to a couple of weeks. I got pears from my neighbour, and it took 6 weeks before they were getting soft. The problem then is that the process speeds up, so that they get rotten ( from inside) before you know it.

 

[Bill W]

Could be up to a couple of weeks. I got pears from my neighbour, and it took 6 weeks before they were getting soft. The problem then is that the process speeds up, so that they get rotten ( from inside) before you know it.

I'll keep an eye on them and try and judge when they'll be ripe enough. That gives me time to think about what to do with them and look up recipes.
I started a couple of gallons of pear wine a couple of months ago but they were a small dessert variety (Petit Poire) which ripen on the tree, so it was a case of dive in and get it done. They are still ticking along, nearly finished fermenting and slooooowly starting to clear.

 

[johncrobinson]

Lots of fruit only ripen when exposed to other ripe/overipe fruit

As far as Bill W is concerned,Get them fermenting now.

Sugar is sugar,Yeast are not concerned.

 

[johncrobinson]

Just seen your post chopps

Yes is the answer.

Mainly due to the "slow" freezing process

An excellent method of ecxtraction,For those that dont own a press.

 

[Shirley Bassett]

Bananas give off Ethylene which help to ripen other fruit.

I’ve previously scrat pears to make Perry.

If I’m honest I’ve never had much luck with it though.

I read that you should leave scratted pears for 24 hours before pressing out the juice, as it yields more juice. I left them covered with a tea towel in my garage, and the next day there was considerably more juice, but it had already started fermenting as there was a head of bubbles on the juice. This batch ended up acetic in flavour.

My next attempt I treated them as if they were apples. I sulphited this juice, at a rate of 1 Campden tablet per 5 litres of juice. Left it for 24 hours and then added a cider yeast. The start gravity of the pressed juice was around 1065. It had a dark brown colour, and fermented down to 1008. It never got any lower. I read that pear juice contains more complex sugars than apple juice, so won’t ferment to 1.000

This batch tasted absolutely superb at the bottling stage. It was even better at 3 months old, but at 6 months it had turned acetic / vinegary, but I don’t know why.

I’ve never bothered with pears since.

I don’t have any experience of making wine.

 

[johncrobinson]

Low alcohol drinks such as beer,cider,Or in this case perry are allways at risk.

It adds complication but if you make them sparkling that helps.

 

[Shirley Bassett]

I did carbonate the pear batch that went off over time, at a rate of 10g sugar / litre of Perry.

I didn’t do anything different than I would to a fresh, turbo or kit cider.

In the end I just put it down to the pears.

 

[Bill W]

The pears ended up on the compost heap. They had started to go mouldy without ripening. Having done some research, it turns out they were some variety of winter pears. Winter pears are picked in November but will not ripen unless they are cold-stored for a couple of weeks. After this, when brought into ambient temperatures, they ripen within days. Not having a large cold store, I think I'll pass on any more of these that come along and wait for next summer's "Summer" pears, which ripen on the tree.